Job Crafting and Employee Engagement: A multivariate study

Abstract

Research on positive psychology states that employees allowed to craft their jobs proactively balance their work, improve their performance and enhance their overall well-being. Job crafting is a reverse pyramid approach. Traditional job descriptions were written by the managers alone; involving the employees in contributing towards their job description increases their level of intrinsic motivation. Many studies have reported that job crafting and employee well-being are correlated. The primary area of the study is to explore the relationship between job crafting and employee engagement in software companies. Using correlation analysis, it is found that there is a positive relationship between the two variables – job crafting and employee engagement. The secondary objective is to identify the
impact of work autonomy, leadership, rewards and recognition (factors of job crafting) on employee engagement using multiple regression; the results are
positive. The second part of the study draws some inference on the employee’s perception at the top, middle and lower job positions about job crafting and
employee engagement using MANOVA.

Job Crafting

Dutton & Wrzesniewski (2001) measured how people in subdued jobs were able to cope with what they termed as “devalued work”. They chose hospital janitors. They discovered a subset of the hospital’s cleaners who didn’t see themselves as part of the janitorial staff at all; rather, they saw themselves as part of the professional staff and as an integral part of the healing team.

Job crafting is a proactive approach. Jobs are crafted and designed before any immediate requirement. It requires forecasting the changes in the internal and
external environment and proactively crafting the job to deal with the change (Grant & Ashford, 2008; Griffin, Neal, & Parker, 2007).

Lyons (2008) observed that job crafting is a valuable exercise for sales professionals as it is found to have a positive correlation with self-image, perceived control,
and readiness to change. The identity framed as selfimage has a strong and positive relation with job crafting.

Berg, Grant, and Johnson (2010) identified the mechanism through which employees craft their jobs in response to having unanswered occupational callings – that is, feeling drawn to pursue an occupation other than the one in which they work. Employees practiced the sort of pleasant psychological states of delight and meaning that they connected with pursuing their unreciprocated callings by incorporating the tasks of their unreciprocated callings into their current jobs. Employees reported a long term regret experience if they did not view their current occupation as their calling whenever employees expressed their short term job crafting intentions (Berg, Wrzesniewski, and Dutton 2010). With the passage of time, employees are promoted or given more responsibility, their job description changes; there is also a substantial amount of change in job crafting. Hence, time as an important parameter was added to study job crafting.